


My brown eyed girl

by SparrowFlight246



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Brother-Sister Relationships, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, come for the drama stay for the feels, endgame spoilers, hell everyone needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 06:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18794710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SparrowFlight246/pseuds/SparrowFlight246
Summary: Slowly, Peter watches Morgan Stark grow up.Quickly, Peter becomes Morgan’s person.Immediately, Morgan becomes Peter’s.(They both follow in Tony’s footsteps.)





	My brown eyed girl

**Author's Note:**

> THIS CONTAINS ENDGAME SPOILERS. SOME SERIOUS, HEAVY, MAJOR ENDGAME SPOILERS. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVENT SEEN ENDGAME! WE COOL? OKAY, CONTINUE. 
> 
> Hi there! New idea here, and I'm beyond psyched to see what you guys think about it. 
> 
> Title from Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl, and many many thanks to my lovely betas, Jaysong and Anna H.
> 
> Enjoy, and thank you so much for reading!

The first thing that Peter notices about Morgan is her eyes.

He meets her just before the funeral, when everyone’s wearing black, sweating under their formal wear in the heat of the summer morning, and the world seems quieter than Peter’s ever known it to be before. When May slips inside to get a drink, he finds himself wandering into the shadow of the lakehouse in search of some relief from the sunlight. People mill around everywhere, but everyone's keeping to themselves for the most part, leaving him be at a respectful distance. He's glad for it. He doesn't exactly feel up for small talk at the moment.

He's still standing in the shade, his hands folded behind his back and his head down, when he hears a call of his name. He looks up to find Pepper and Rhodey approaching him, their dark figures blurred by the sunlight. A young child trails along by Pepper's side.

Peter already knows Tony has a daughter. It was one of the first things he found out after the battle, when Rhodey and Sam took it upon themselves to sit him down and catch him up on everything he’s missed over the past five years. But hearing about her is something distinctly different than meeting her, and for some reason, he finds a lump in his throat as he watches them draw closer. 

“Hey, honey,” Pepper says when they reach him, and her eyes are red and her face is exhausted but her smile, however watery, is genuine as anything. “How are you holding up?”

He takes a breath, doing his best to return the smile as he slips his hands into his pockets. “I’m okay,” he says, his voice thick. Rhodey, standing at Pepper’s shoulder, shoots him a sympathetic look. “Um, is this...?”

Pepper smiles again, easier this time. “It is,” she says. She crouches down beside the little girl next to her, brushing her daughter’s hair back behind her shoulders with a gentle hand. “Morgan, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.” She meets his gaze, expression warm, voice soft. “This is Peter.”

And then Morgan Stark looks up at him, and Peter’s breath catches in his throat. 

She has Tony’s eyes. 

It’s like a sucker punch to the gut, stealing the air from his lungs, the words from his mouth. Morgan watches him, her tiny black dress way too dark on a child made for color and her expression way too innocent for the situation they're currently in, but those eyes watching him are _Tony’s_ and dear _god,_ this is _Tony’s daughter._

Tony has a daughter.

Rhodey’s hand lands on his shoulder. He hadn’t even realized that Rhodey had moved to stand beside him, but his hand is steadying and stable, grounding even as his breathing falters. Gently, Rhodey squeezes the junction between his shoulder and his neck, reassuring, reminding, before letting his hand fall away again.

Slowly, Peter crouches down.

Now that they’re at the same level, Morgan steadies her gaze on Peter, looking wary but curious as she studies the stranger in front of her. She’s far from shy, though, and her dark eyes meet his fearlessly. Peter finds himself smiling, even if his vision is blurred with tears.

He offers her his hand. 

“Hi,” he says, voice hoarse. “I’m Peter.”

She looks to Pepper for reassurance, but when her mother nods in confirmation, Morgan turns back to him with an air of confidence only a Stark would able to possess at this age. She reaches out and shakes his hand like she’s probably seen her parents do so many times before, her tiny fingers dwarfed by his. 

“I’m Morgan Stark,” she chirps. 

Peter hides the sob behind a breath of a laugh, his smile shaky but true. “I think we’re going to like each other, Morgan,” he says.

She beams. “I think so, too.”

***

Peter and May move in with Pepper and Morgan two weeks after the funeral. 

In his will, Tony left Pepper a giant building in NYC not far from Peter and May's old apartment. It was a typical apartment building originally, Peter thinks, but Tony had it renovated sometime in the past handful of years, and now the apartments are each the size of an entire floor. According to Rhodey, it's a little like a new and improved version of the old Tower. Ned nearly passes out when Peter tells him that he's going to be living there.

They don’t know exactly when Tony got this building, or when he renovated it, or when he planned out its function. The records are foggy at best and flat out missing at worst, probably intentionally, but no one does all that much digging either. Because what they do know is that it was part of a plan to be carried out in the event of his death. He gave his family somewhere to go after he was gone. He planned out everything.

Pepper and Morgan get the penthouse, and the floors below them are dedicated to everyone else. Happy moves in as soon as the space is offered to him, and Rhodey stays on his floor whenever he's in town, or whenever he misses his goddaughter too much. Aside from them, there are a handful of floors that're furnished but not personalized for whenever any of the other Avengers need a place to crash, and there's a common floor, and a workshop and a lab and a medbay and anything else any of them could possibly need. It's awesome, if Peter's being honest, and fantastically cool.

And then, above the common floor, directly below Pepper and Morgan, is the floor Tony left for Peter and May. 

May accepts the offer immediately when Pepper asks. With the weight of rent lifted off her shoulders, she’s able to take less shifts, spend more time at home and with Peter. It’s an adjustment for sure when they first move in. Peter grows used to random Avengers striding into his apartment at spontaneous hours when they need something, and dinners with Pepper and Morgan become a regular thing almost immediately. But the space is amazing and the proximity to everyone he cares about is reassuring, and their floor very quickly becomes home.

Besides, the move to the new Tower means he’s suddenly a staircase away from Morgan at all times. Whenever he finds himself worrying or stressing or overthinking, all he has to do is go downstairs to find her or anyone else he might need, and that convenience is incredibly relieving in ways that Peter wasn’t expecting but definitely isn’t complaining about. 

It also means that he and Morgan start spending a lot of time together. 

“Red crayon, please.”

Peter dutifully reaches over to her ridiculously large box of crayons and starts picking out the red shades as Morgan continues doodling, propped up on her elbows on the floor with a piece of white printer paper in front of her. “Light red or dark red?” he asks, holding up her options.

“Um, dark red.”

He hands over the chosen crayon and watches as she scribbles. Both of them sit on Pepper’s living room carpet, Peter leaning back against the couch and Morgan drawing across from him. Thinking ahead, Peter had slid a slab of cardboard under her paper when they first sat down, keeping it from wrinkling. 

Days like this have become common lately. Pepper can’t always be around to be with Morgan, so Peter’s often the one to step up and spend some time with her when Pepper’s busy. It’s grounding, honestly. It keeps Peter in the moment, makes him focus in on the present, and doesn’t give him the chance to get stuck in his own head. 

Besides, playing with Morgan is fun for him too, and he knows it makes May happy to see him smiling. 

He squints as he watches as she continues to color, senseless loops turning into relative shapes that only really make sense to her. Usually he’s pretty good at figuring out what she’s going for with her creations, considering his imagination (and immaturity, honestly) is about at par with her’s, but today he’s coming up empty. Random, wobbly circles don’t give a lot away. He thinks he can recognize Spider-Man (that secret didn’t stay a secret for long once they moved in— Morgan’s just a different breed of nosy) but other than that, he’s clueless.

He taps the edge of the paper with his finger, catching her attention. She glances up at him with the crayon still clutched in her small hand. “Can you tell me about this?” he asks, not wanting to flat out admit that he has no idea what she’s drawing but curious nonetheless.

She smiles, sitting up with the paper splayed out in front of her. “That’s you,” she says, pointing to a red and blue blob on one side of the page, which makes him mentally fist pump in victory, “and that’s Daddy,” she continues, pointing to the red and yellow blob next to the first. If you’re up to artistic interpretation, the two blobs might be holding hands. “You guys are fighting a bad guy together.”

Peter looks closer at the picture, and sure enough, the drawing definitely does look a little like Spider-Man and Iron Man together, holding hands in a much more sunshine and rainbows version of the battles they actually did fight together. 

He pauses, his gaze steadied on the paper as he feels the sudden lump in his throat swell. This is something that’s been happening a lot too; small things that set him off and make his grief flare when he’s not expecting it. Morgan knows Tony’s gone— she's a bright kid, and she gets it, and she's certainly seen the impact his death has had on everyone around her. Even still, though, Peter keeps his eyes trained on the drawing until he can blink the tears back, not wanting her to see.

A few seconds of convulsive swallowing later, he’s got a handle on himself, and he reaches out and ruffles Morgan’s hair to shake off the remaining tightness in his chest. 

Morgan giggles, trying to shake him off and squealing when he doesn’t relent. She topples over as he goes from ruffling to tickling, and it’s only a second before the urge to cry turns into the urge to laugh. “That’s a good drawing, Mo,” he says once he stops and she’s fully collapsed onto the ground, grinning at him where she’s sprawled out across the carpet. “I love it.”

She giggles breathlessly. “I knew you would.”

***

Babysitting very quickly becomes a regular part of Peter’s routine. School doesn’t get back into session for a while after the second snap, so Peter spends a lot of time hanging out at the new Tower, training with the other Avengers, watching movies with May, tinkering in the brand new workshop that desperately needs to be broken in. But he also spends a nearly ridiculous amount of that time with Morgan, so he finds himself being the go-to babysitter within a handful of weeks.

But watching her for a couple of hours here and there while Pepper’s in meetings is a totally different thing than having her for a whole ass 24 hours, which is why it’s surprising when Pepper approaches him about having Morgan overnight while she’s out of town on business. 

It’s only May agreeing to stick around as backup that makes Peter feel comfortable with taking her. And even that's a stretch, but Pepper obviously trusts him and May'll be there as backup, and the relief that floods Pepper's expression makes the stress worth it. A week later, Pepper drops Morgan off on their floor before leaving to catch her flight, and Peter engages long-term babysitting mode. 

The day she spends with him goes fast. They color and play and do all the things they usually do together while May mills around the apartment just in case, and it’s nearly a normal day. It’s a little weird to put Morgan to bed, sure, but she’s still just a staircase away from Peter and May, and Peter’s feeling pretty good about himself by the time he goes to bed too. Everything goes pretty much exactly to plan.

Until the damned storm hits. 

That’s a bit less than planned, honestly.

“Peter?”

He rolls over automatically at the sound of his name, bleary and mostly asleep even as his eyes crack open. His bedroom is dark with the late hour, and he can hear the rain pelting against the outside of the walls, the water rushing down the gutters out on the street, the subtle creaking as the building steadies itself against the wind. The window panes rattle in their frames, and _damn,_ it’s really coming down out there. 

He lays there for a second longer, still half asleep and somewhat confused about what woke him up, until he registers the second heartbeat in the room, pounding and terrified, that is definitely not his. 

And then he’s suddenly wide awake because oh god, Morgan. 

He shoves himself upright just as thunder cracks, the _boom_ seeming to shake the very foundation of building. A blinding burst of lighting follows an instant later, illuminating the room for a fraction of second, but it’s enough for his eyes to flash over and see a teary Morgan standing in his bedroom door. As the room is plunged into darkness again, he hears her breath hitch.

“P-Peter?” she whispers again, voice wavering.

And _huh,_ he finds himself thinking despite the adrenaline instantaneously flooding his system and urging him to do something and fix this, because she came to him. 

It’s a little alarming to realize that. 

She didn’t go to May, or go and find one of the other Avengers, or try to call Pepper or something. She came to _him._ She trusts him.

Weird.

“Hey, hey, you’re okay, c’mere,” he whispers nearly on instinct, and she bolts across the room in a second. It takes him a second to shift to the side and make room for her, but she crawls under his covers anyway like a terrified little koala, pressing tight to his side as she takes a shaky breath. 

It occurs to him that he might have graduated past babysitter status.

His twin mattress is really too small to fit the both of them, but with her curled up against him and him squished back against the wall, they make it work. Almost automatically, his hand comes up to stroke her hair, gentle and reassuring. It's instinctive, and kind of mindless, but Morgan's heart rate steadies a little right off the bat, which makes him think that he's done something right.

It takes him a second, but then he realizes that the whole hair stroking thing is what Tony used to do when Peter came to him after having nightmares. 

His hand almost falters at that.

Shit, he's actually channeling Tony Stark parenting lessons right now.

Maybe Morgan isn’t the only one taking after him after all.

He doesn’t talk for a while, instead letting her shaking die down and giving her heart rate the chance to slow, just keeping his hand moving through her hair and making sure his breathing stays steady. Once she’s calmed down, he settles his chin on her head, careful not to disturb her. “Is the storm scaring you?”

She nods against his chest. 

He hums in understanding, twirling a strand of her hair between his fingers. “Do you want to get up and do something, or do you just want to stay here?” he asks, voice soft. 

She takes a shaky inhale and buries closer into him. “Stay here.”

“Okay,” he whispers. “That’s cool. The Peter’s Bed hotel is open for business.”

That earns a watery giggle from her, which is what he was going for. She presses her face to the hollow of his throat, warm in his arms, and his hand never halts in his ministrations. 

It’s not long before her breathing evens out and he knows that she’s finally asleep. He lets out a breath of relief himself, incredibly glad that their mini crisis resolved itself so well, and finally lets himself relax.

The next morning dawns clear, and May sends a picture of the two of them curled up together to Pepper once she manages to find them. 

_Love our kids,_ Pepper responds. 

May can’t help but agree. 

***

College comes faster than Peter’s prepared for, and it’s a jarring change in more ways than one. Suddenly he’s living away from home, taking challenging classes and meeting new people and figuring himself out and it’s fucking _great,_ but he misses the Tower like crazy from the beginning, and that doesn’t really fade with time. He never thought he’d miss having Sam and Bucky regularly break into his room to steal web fluid every time they run out of duct tape, but sometimes he surprises himself. 

Luckily, he’s close enough to come home pretty much whenever he wants. He’s back at the Tower most weekends and breaks, even after a couple years pass and the new normal of him not being around all the time is firmly established. He’d gladly sacrifice the college experience of weekend keggers in favor of sitting on the floor and discussing Disney movies with Morgan.

He knows that they’d be okay if he didn’t come home as often as he does. May and Pepper keep each other company when he’s gone, and Morgan grows more independent as she gets older, but he’ll still always prefer the typically chaotic Tower over his empty dorm room. It’s home.

He’s freshly home for winter break a few years into college when Morgan wanders into his room one frosty December weeknight, the padding of her feet giving away her entrance. Peter glances up briefly from the essay he’s outlining at his desk, flashing her a smile. “Hey, Mo. You here to drag me upstairs for dinner?”

“Peter?” she says instead, plopping down on the edge of his bed. Something in her voice makes him look up again, actually looking at her this time instead of just shooting her a cursory glance that usually comes with distraction and preoccupation, and shit, she actually looks upset about something. His essay suddenly doesn’t seem all that important. “Can I talk to you about something?”

“Yeah, of course,” he says, pushing himself away from his desk and sending his wheeled chair rolling across the room, spinning to look at her. “Is everything okay?”

She nods, staring at her hands in her lap. “Yeah. We just, uh, we talked about the Vanishing in our history class today. You were in our textbooks.” She shrugs, still not meeting his eyes. “I just wanted to ask you about it.”

And _oh._

Although it’s a little weird to hear that he‘s now included in fifth grade history curriculum, it’s not a surprise that Morgan’s learning about the Vanishing. Pepper had to sign a permission slip for that class a few weeks back, and both she and Peter have been bracing themselves for this conversation since, knowing that Morgan was going to have questions and that they were going to have be the ones to provide answers.

She’s known the basics of the snap and the second snap since she was a little kid, because both of them impacted her as much as they did. They explained everything after the population she’d always known abruptly doubled and there was suddenly a group of people who called themselves the other half of the Avengers staring at her like they’d never seen anything as interesting as a four-year-old named Stark. However, the details had been majorly admitted from the stories they had told her, and now, she’s probably learned some new things today.

Curiosity about what happened is beyond expected.

What is a helluva surprise is that she’s coming to Peter instead of Pepper with that curiosity. Pepper pulled him into the conversation about the permission slip because she thought this would happen, but Peter honestly thought she was just humoring him. He didn’t expect it to actually _happen._

Well, here goes nothing, he guesses. 

“Oh,” he says, “okay. Okay, um. Let me grab the chocolate, then.”

Chocolate is always a part of Serious Conversations, so Peter has a stash of it under his bed in a shoebox for these types of situations specifically. The last time they had to bust it out was when Morgan asked Peter what a period was last month after she heard some girls in her class talking. Pepper and May ended up having to help him with that one.

They both grab a fun-size Hershey’s bar from the box, and then Peter slides it back under and sits beside Morgan, perching on the edge of his mattress. She takes a sullen bite of the chocolate as he unwraps his own. 

“What do you want to know?” he asks, nudging her knee with his own. “Well, actually, first off, are we talking the entire thing within itself, or just a specific part?”

She shrugs. “Both, I guess.”

Peter fixes her with a practiced look of patient expectancy, takes a bite of his chocolate, and watches her as he chews.

It only takes a few seconds for her to start talking. Quiet unnerves her, much like it unnerved her father, and letting the silence linger is a sure-fire way to get something out of her. 

“Where did you go?” she asks around the candy. “Did you really just… _stop existing_ for five years?”

Well, at least she’s not beating around the bush. 

Peter swallows the bite in his mouth, trying to figure out a way to explain all this that isn’t going to scar Morgan for life. He buys himself some time by shifting so that he’s sitting further back on his bed, leaning his shoulders against the wall flush to the bunk. Also, his back was starting to kill him. “Basically, yeah,” he says. Morgan moves with him, settling in beside him as she takes another bite of chocolate. “I remember disappearing, but I don’t remember anything after that. It was like I was with your dad on Titan one minute, and the next thing I knew, Dr. Strange was yanking me to my feet and telling me to move.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

She pauses, fidgeting with the wrapper of the candy bar. “We talked about my dad today, too,” she says, after a moment. “Did he really die to bring you guys back?”

At that, Peter hesitates. 

Morgan knows the basics about what happened to Tony, he sure of, but he’s not as sure of the extent of what she knows, or what she knew before today. She and Peter talk about Tony often, so it’s not like he’s a forbidden subject or anything. He tells her stories about him, she asks questions about him, and they keep his memory alive in whatever ways they can manage. But they don’t usually talk about his death. That’s something neither of them bring up much, partly due to general avoidance of the topic, mostly due to their tendency to focus on the good parts of Tony Stark’s life instead of the bad.

He can tell her everything, but he doesn’t know if he wants to be the one responsible for telling the innocent ten-year-old all the details of her dad’s demise, and he’s not sure if that’s even necessary at this point anyway. 

But he’s still going to tell her the truth. Tony deserves that. 

He knows Morgan can handle it. 

“Kind of,” Peter finally says, voice careful. “He definitely helped to bring us back. He came up with the technology that made it possible, and he basically did everything to let it happen other than actually snapping his fingers.”

“Because Uncle Bruce did that,” Morgan cuts in.

He laughs, the candy wrapper crinkling in his hand. “Yeah, because Uncle Bruce did that,” he agrees. “But even after we came back, we were still fighting Thanos and his army, and it was just so much that we couldn’t handle it. If Thanos got the Infinity Gauntlet back, he was gonna just wipe everyone out again, but we were all going to die if we kept trying to keep it away from him. We weren’t going to win. Your dad did what he had to to make sure we didn’t lose.”

“So my dad died to save you guys.”

“Yeah, he did.”

She presses closer to his side, her temple coming to rest against his shoulder, and he shifts to put an arm around her. There’s a pause in which Peter sits and listens to her breathing, and then Morgan sighs. “I still miss him, sometimes,” she says. “I know it’s been a long time, and I don’t even remember him very much, but I still miss him.”

God, the ability this girl has to carve out his heart with just a few words is scary.

Peter sighs in return, letting his cheek fall against the top of her head. His thumb sweeps back and forth on her shoulder, the motion nearly automatic as she curls into him. “I still miss him too,” he says softly. “Like crazy, actually.”

There’s another pause, then Morgan slings an arm over his waist, tugging herself in closer. “I know.”

***

As Morgan grows older, the amount of time she spends in the workshop increases more and more with the months until she spends nearly as much time down there as Peter does, which is honestly saying something. She works on small projects of her own, or helps him with suit upgrades for himself or the other Avengers, and spending hours hunched over a lab table with just the two of them in the shop soon becomes commonplace. She’s good with tools, and it’s fun watching her learn.

That, and the music she likes to play over the speakers honestly rocks. Peter’s pretty sure her music taste is better than his these days. 

However, nights in the workshop belong solely to Peter. When he can’t sleep, that’s where he ends up, and the solitude usually helps to quiet his mind. He sits with the bots and tinkers until the nightmare fades or the insomnia lets up, and most times, it works.

Tonight, though, is going to be a challenge even for workshop therapy.

He hits the back wall of the elevator hard, clutching to the handrail and wheezing through a desperate inhale. The fluorescent lamp above glares down on him as he slides to the floor, but firelight dances in the edges of his memory, and he can _smell_ the smoke, the sweat and tears and blood and _burnt flesh—_

The sob that comes is ragged and strangled, gasping even as he claps a hand over his mouth, frantically trying to regain control of his breathing. His free arm wraps around his knees, and he presses his shoulders hard to the wall of the elevator, his chest heaving and his hands violently shaking. The elevator doors shut with a ding. 

“Peter, your vitals suggest you’re in distress,” FRIDAY says calmly, even if her automated voice seems to hold an edge of worry. “Would you like me to notify Miss Pepper—“

“No!” Peter gasps out immediately, shaking his head through a sob of panic. “No no no, don’t bother her, don’t—“

“Okay,” FRIDAY interrupts, and now she sounds almost soothing. They’ve been dealing with this for nearly ten years now, even after the therapy and the time and the broken road of recovery, and she knows the protocol. “Would you like to go down to the workshop instead?”

 _”Please,”_ Peter sobs. The elevator starts descending obediently. He presses his forehead to his knees, breathing ragged as he forces himself through the inhales and exhales he knows he needs to avoid passing out. The tiles is freezing beneath him.

The dozens of floors between his floor and the workshop give him the time to get a hold of himself, although his eyes are still burning and his hands are still shaking by the time the cab stops. His breathing feels wet, and even now, stones glint and smoke billows in the corner of his eye. 

The doors slide open, and Peter lifts his head from his knees, taking in a shaky inhale. 

He’s not expecting to see Morgan staring back at him from where she’s perched on a lab stool, a small speaker playing her music in the corner and a scattered papers sprawled across the work table, but there she is. 

_”Peter?”_

Immediately, he wants to shove himself to his feet, to suck it up and pretend that he’s fine and not show weakness in front of the _thirteen-year-old child_ that is way too young to be dealing with his extensive PTSD, even if this is far from the first time she’s seen it. Instead, though, his breathing just hitches again, his chest constricting, like an encore of the full fledged breakdown which is now very quickly gaining intensity. 

Because that’s Morgan, Morgan’s _here_ and she’s safe and she’s alive but she _wasn’t_ and oh _god_ he lost her he _lost her—_

He has just enough time for panic to flood him before Morgan is sliding into a kneel in front of him. “Woah, hey, look at me,” she says, grabbing his hands (his hands his hands Tony used to grab his hands oh god _Tony_ ) within one of her own and tipping his chin up with the other, making him meet her gaze. Her dark eyes are intent, focused, her expression firm even as her touch stays gentle. “You’ve gotta breathe, Pete. C’mon.”

He gasps, chest heaving (ash sticks in his throat and smoke catches in his lungs and he can’t breathe he can’t breathe _he can’t breathe_ ) but Morgan doesn’t falter. She squeezes his wrist, gentle but grounding, her face close and real and living. “It’s okay,” she says, the words nearly a command. “It’s fall of 2032, you’re in the Tower, everyone is here and safe and alive, and _you’re okay.”_

It takes her almost fifteen minutes to talk him down from the panic attack, just the two of them on the elevator floor with her hands over his and her gaze never straying from his eyes. She counts out loud, easing him through inhalations and exhalations, until his breathing is steady enough for comfort.

Finally, his chest loosens, and Peter knows the danger is finally past. He takes a shaky breath and lets his head thud back against the wall behind him, feeling completely and utterly drained, his throat scraped raw and his mind stripped bare. Morgan carefully lets go of his hands, and he can just hear the nearly silent sigh of relief she releases. 

“You’ve gotten good at that,” he says after a moment, his voice hoarse.

She breathes a small, grim laugh. She’s been sitting in front of him since they’ve been in here, but now she moves to sit against the wall beside him, letting her back rest. FRIDAY hasn’t closed the elevator doors or moved the cab from the workshop. They’re the only ones awake at this hour anyway. 

“Nightmare?” she asks, not prodding, not demanding, just curious. 

“Yeah,” Peter sighs. He doesn’t waste breath trying to claim that it wasn’t as bad as it was, because really, it was, and Morgan would see right through him anyway. “The second snap again. With some… other stuff, too.”

Morgan watches him for a moment, giving him the chance to elaborate if he feels the need to, but he lets the silence linger. She doesn’t need to know the details, and he’d rather not relive it yet again.

Besides, one of the new additions to a well practiced dream was that Morgan was there this time around. It set off a brand new streak of panic Peter didn’t even know he had when she showed up. 

He’s already watched enough people die in real life. Adding her death to the list, even if it was only in a dream, shook him deeper than he wants to think about.

Morgan nods, letting her legs stretch out across the floor. “I’m sorry,” she says, glancing over at him. “I know you’re gonna say it’s not my fault, and I know that it’s not, but nightmares still suck.”

Peter huffs a weak laugh. “Got it.” When he turns to look at her, it registers for the first time that she’s still wearing the clothes she went to school in. It’s a Friday night, so it’s not like she’ll have to be getting up early in the morning, but it’s like she never went to bed in the first place. His brow creases. “Why’re you still up anyway?”

“Homework,” she says, the word grating and bitter. “Algebra is going to be the end of me.”

“Hmm, yeah, algebra does stink.”

She throws him a small smile before looking away again, and he surprises himself by returning it. The panic has almost entirely faded by now. It’s a little disarming how easily casual conversation on the floor of an elevator cab was able to distract him, and maybe a bit concerning, but Morgan’s weirdly good at talking him down from these types of things.

She gets that from her dad, too. 

“Well, do you need any help with it?” Peter asks, ducking his head to catch her eye again. “I’m not going to be sleeping again anytime soon, so if you need the backup, I’m here.”

“Oh _god_ yes, please,” she says immediately, pushing herself to her feet. “I’m stuck on problem 19. FRIDAY tried her best and DUM-E beeped at me a few times, but I think you’re my only hope.”

When she offers a hand to help him up, he takes it. 

***

As much as Peter actually does enjoy college, he flat out loves summer.

College is great, but it’s _stressful._ He’s glad that he’s getting extended education, glad that he’s collecting degrees like crazy and going for exactly what he wants in life, but it’s just _so much._ He has to stress over assignments while still being Spider-Man and trying to dedicate at least some time to his friends and family and work all while making his classes on time, and by the time finals week rolls around, he feels like his anxiety levels have transcended the atmosphere itself. 

But summer… summer is complete and utter freedom. He’s given two blissful months to do whatever the hell he wants with his time. He gets to come home, get ice cream with Morgan, see movies with Ned and MJ, spend days in the workshop with Rhodey and Morgan and spend nights in the lab with Bruce, eat dinners with May and Pepper nearly every night. He gets to _breathe,_ and that’s why summer is the best. 

Also, some immature, young part of him just likes summer for the hell of it, and he doesn’t think that’s ever going to fade. 

“Hey, I’ve got an idea, but I think I’m going to need backup for it. You in?”

And now, a few days into the summer before Morgan’s sophomore year of high school, it seems like these next couple of months might be even more interesting than Peter was planning. 

He looks up from his suit upgrades to find Morgan striding into the workshop, her dark hair brushing the tops of her shoulders as she walks. She just got out of school last week too, and so far the two of them have spent their vacation split between the shop and the lab. May says they’re going to look like vampires in comparison to their classmates by the time fall rolls around if they don’t start going outside every once in a while.

“That depends what this idea is,” he says, admittedly interested but proceeding with caution until he knows what he’s agreeing to. “Is it going to get me arrested?”

She hits him with a smile that’s all Tony and not at all reassuring. “Probably not,” she says. Plopping onto a lab stool beside the one he’s perched on, she leans against the lab table he’s working at, her side pressed into the edge so that she’s facing him. “I mean, FRIDAY calculated the risk, and it’s, got, like, a 86 percent chance of success without legal action. You gotta admit that’s not as bad as some of the stuff we’ve done in the past.”

“Actually, it’s a 86.8 percent chance,” FRIDAY says helpfully.

Morgan grins. “See? It’s even higher than I thought. You can’t argue with statistics.” She smiles again, half smug and half hopeful. She nudges his shin with the toe of her sneaker. “Come on, you know you want to ask about it.”

He releases a long-suffering sigh for melodramatic purposes, but puts down his pencil and turns to her anyway. “Okay, hit me.”

She takes a breath, and for the first time, it hits Peter that she’s nervous about whatever she’s about to propose. It’s not obvious, but he catches how her fingers drum against the surface of the table, the split second flicker of anxiety in her expression as she exhales, the steadying way her ankle hooks around the leg of the lab stool. 

Her gaze flickers up to meet his again, and she says, “I want to build myself a suit.”

Peter freezes halfway through an inhale. 

A suit. 

As in, she wants to become a hero. 

It’s not an idea that he’s unfamiliar with, not by a long shot. He had the same stupidly brilliant epiphany over ten years ago, only instead of going to an adult he trusted about it, he got himself a onesie and set out on the streets. 

Well, hey, at least Morgan’s not doing that. 

But she wants to become a hero.

She wants to become a _hero._

Why the _hell_ does she want to become a hero?

Slowly, he lets out the breath he was holding. “Is this your weird, terrifying way of telling me you got bit by a radioactive spider too?”

The laugh that escapes her at that is startled and high, like she was expecting something far sterner and more chastising than that as a response. She shakes her head, her ankle hooking around the leg of the stool again. “No, it’s not,” she says, the ghost of her smile still in her words even as her next exhale comes out a little shaky. “Nothing happened to me, Pete.”

There is something in him that admittedly loosens in relief at that, his mind already entertaining visions of science experiments gone wrong among other, more creative options, like genetically engineered bee stings or freaky kinds of chemical rain. He’s always been imaginative. “Then what brought this on?” he asks, trying not to overreact before he knows the entire situation. “Did something else happen? Everything’s okay with you, right?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” she says, and considering he knows what she sounds like when she’s lying, it’s reassuring to know that she’s telling the truth. She shrugs, looking hesitant. “I just… I want to help you guys.”

“You guys?” Peter echoes, his voice growing flatter. “Who do you mean by that?”

She sighs, her eyes dropping as she seems to brace herself. “The Avengers,” she mumbles. 

And oh _god._

She glances up at him after a second, sheepish and nervous, but he hasn’t moved, his expression stricken and mind working to process. “You want to become an Avenger,” he repeats.

“Well, no,” she says quickly, seeing the way Peter’s eyes harden. “Not right away, at least. I’d figure everything out first. I mean, eventually, maybe, but—“

“No,” Peter says. 

She falters, stunned. 

_”No,”_ Peter repeats, growing more confident in the refusal. He pushes away from the desk, rising from his stool and striding across the workshop. He leaves the table with the initial intention of grabbing another part for his project, but the distance also gives him the chance to process when Morgan’s not a foot away from him, staring at him, watching him for any indication of what he’s thinking. “It’s not gonna work, Morgan. We’re not doing this.”

But then she finds her words again, and she spins on her stool to face him. “Why not?” she asks, her previously hesitant voice gaining strength now. “Why won’t it work? Why can’t I try?”

“It’s not safe,” Peter says firmly, grabbing the parts he needs from the storage bins they have stacked on one side of the lab with a bit rougher of motions than strictly necessary. “Heroes _die,_ kiddo, and if you die, that’ll be the end of everything for all of us, okay? We can’t risk you.”

“I won’t die,” Morgan argues. She braces herself against the desk, her head held high and challenging in a way that’s so _Tony_ it makes Peter’s heart clench half in anger and half in grief. “I know my dad died, and I know it was because he was Iron Man, but that doesn’t mean that everyone that dons a suit is gonna kick the bucket just _because—“_

“It’s dangerous—“

“Besides, you’ve been doing this for over a damn _decade,_ and you haven’t died yet—“

“I _did_ die, I just came back,” Peter mutters, his tone hot, “and that’s not normal, so don’t try to use it as your backup.”

She slams her hand on the surface of the work table, and Peter spins around to look at her. She still hasn’t moved from the stool, but her eyes are blazing, her brow creased and spine ramrod straight, and Peter suddenly realizes that she’s _serious_ about this. “Why won’t you just let me _try?”_ she demands, her voice sharp. “If I can’t do it, then I won’t. If it doesn’t work out, then I’ll drop it. If we figure out that it really is a terrible idea, then we’ll stop. But come _on,_ Peter, just give me a shot here.”

He sets down the parts he’s holding, his expression steely as he levels his gaze on hers. “You’re too young,” he says. “Being a hero is more than the suit. There’s so much shit you have to work through, shit you shouldn’t have to worry about ever, let alone now. Honestly, Morgan, you’re _fifteen—“_

_”So were you!”_

It startles both of them, Peter thinks. Morgan’s breathing heaves even as her hand clamps around the edge of the table, grounding and stabilizing, her burning eyes never leaving his. He stops, staring at her, stunned into silence.

He was Morgan’s age when he started being Spider-Man. Morgan’s age. Morgan, who can’t legally drive yet. Morgan, who hasn’t had her first kiss. Morgan, who still watches Disney movies when she’s had a bad day and needs a pick-me-up. Morgan, who’s a _kid._

Is this what it was like for Tony?

The thought almost knocks him off his feet.

When he started being Spider-Man, he was fifteen. He was a kid, a _child,_ and somehow, he still expected that no one would question him when he went out and tried to take on criminals with nothing but a pair of pajamas between him and the barrel of a gun. He nearly _died_ on so many different occasions back then, back when he thought he could take on the world and walk away without a scratch, and _shit,_ Tony was the one who had to step in and deal with all of it. 

For the first time, he understands why Tony took the suit.

He was trying to take on way too much way too early, and he got hurt because of it, again and again and again, without half a thought towards the fact that he might not be _ready_ for everything he was trying to do. Tony was just trying to keep him safe. He thought that, if Peter lost the suit, he’d lose the interest. 

It wasn’t Tony’s fault that Peter’s stubborn as hell. 

And that brings him back to the situation at hand, because there’s another stubborn-as-hell kid currently staring at him like she’s daring him to speak.

Because when he lost the suit, when he was told no, Peter didn’t just give up and step back into civilian life. He fought for it. He saw the problems in the world and he saw the danger he knew he’d be able to stop, so he just _kept going,_ super-powered suit or not. He went back out in his pajamas and got a fucking _building_ dropped on him because he didn’t know when to stop.

He and Morgan are exactly the same in that sense. They don’t know when to stop.

If he doesn’t help her build a suit, she’s going to be a hero anyway.

She’s Tony Stark’s daughter.

She’s a hero by blood.

No matter what he does, no matter what he says, she’s going to do this. The only difference his decision makes is whether she goes out in a t-shirt or in a bullet-proof suit. If he refuses to help her, if he says no and bans her from the workshop and fights like hell to keep her on the ground, she’ll find a way around it, a way that’s fast and stupid and will put her in so much more danger than she’d be in with a suit to protect her. If he wants to keep her safe, then he has to say yes.

He has to say yes. 

The second he makes up his mind, his posture or expression or _something_ must change, because Morgan falters on the stool across from him. She doesn’t lose her boldness, but she pauses, like she’s just figured it out. “You’re going to help me,” she says softly, the words almost a question.

“Yeah,” Peter says, barely believing his own words. “I am.”

Tony’s probably going to come back and haunt his ass for the rest of his life for this, but the relief that floods over Morgan’s expression is worth it.

***

It takes almost a month to build the suit.

At first, the process is more trial and error than it is anything else. For all the years Peter’s been doing upgrades and repairs on his own suit along with doing them for pretty much all of the other Avengers (seriously, those guys never even _try_ to pick up a wrench), he’s never built a whole suit from scratch, and this is all new territory for him. Obviously, the same goes for Morgan, so they spend more time trying to figure out old orthographic drawings than they do designing in the beginning.

The original base they use is the designs for Pepper’s Rescue suit, considering it’s more or less what they have in mind for Morgan’s. Pepper hasn’t used it since the the last battle ten years ago, having long retired from Avengers business in the physical sense, so it shouldn’t be a problem to get the chance to study it. 

Until they realize that getting that chance includes telling Pepper about their plans, which is admittedly more nerve wracking than Peter’s college interviews. 

They sit her down one night right after they start the project, and to her credit, she doesn’t freak out. She isn’t exactly _happy_ about it either, of course, but years of being with Tony and dealing with his questionable decisions and reckless ideas have long taught her patience. Instead, she just sighs, her expression resigned if not a little worried, and tells them to _please_ be careful. 

Morgan victoriously fist pumps before sprinting for the workshop, but Peter hangs back for a few minutes more, sitting across the kitchen table from Pepper. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” he asks, carefully. He knows what went through his mind when Morgan hit him with this, and he knows it’s probably going through Pepper’s right about now too. Obviously, she’s dealing with it better than he did, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not still bothering her. “Because if you’re not, that’s okay. I can try to talk her out of it.”

She steadies him with a faint, vaguely sad smile, and reaches across the table for his hand. “I’m sure,” she says. “You two are set on this, and that means there’s no going back now. She’s her father’s daughter.” She squeezes his hand once. “And you, honey, are his son in everything but blood.”

After they get her blessing, Morgan and Peter throw themselves into the suit design and barely come up for air again for the next handful of weeks. They work together to design the basics, and FRIDAY is a massive help when they start the building process, but it’s still more difficult to make this happen than Peter was prepared for. Peter’s done enough work on the War Machine suit over the years to have a decent understanding of most of the mechanics, but getting the materials, putting them together, and actually making them _work_ is more of a challenge than either of them were counting on. 

But then Rhodey finds out about their project, and despite never building one of these suits himself either, he’s been wearing one for going on twenty years, so he’s practically an expert. 

He swoops in with faded sketches from old designs and years of experience from figuring all this out with Tony, and it’s exactly the push they need to keep working. The other Avengers find out too, with time, and it becomes common for curious people to start venturing into the workshop from time to time as the weeks pass, periodically checking in on their progress.

But the work itself, the welding, the cutting, the programming, the _building,_ that’s all Morgan and Peter. 

Peter feels kind of badass, being able to honestly say that.

Working in the lab is a practiced normal for them by now. They’ve been running this routine since Morgan was eleven and started wanting to tinker with some of Peter’s scrapped projects, and despite never having done a project this large before, spending hours together slaving over tools is more than familiar. However, there’s something different about working together on a suit, something that’s familiar to Peter in an forgotten way. 

Because every once in a while Morgan will glance up at Peter with a question or a comment, her dark hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail at the back of her head, wearing a oil-stained white tank top with Tony’s shrapnel necklace, the one Pepper made from half of her own and gave to Morgan on her thirteenth birthday, around her neck, and Peter will find himself faltering under the weight of those dark eyes. 

The resemblance is downright scary some days. 

One day, it’s Peter that asks a question, rather than Morgan. The two of them are working on working through an issue they encountered with the design, sketching over the already crumpled and beat up concept sheets as they think their way around it. Without looking up from the drawing he‘s tracing, Peter asks, “Have you thought about what your hero name is gonna be yet?”

Morgan doesn’t look up either, but he sees the way her pencil slows for just a moment before continuing. “A little bit, yeah.”

Knowing Morgan, that means she’s already made a decision, but Peter humors her. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Yeah, actually.” She shades in a part of the design, scribbles in a note to herself in the margins. “I was thinking about Iron Rose.”

Peter looks up. 

Her gaze flickers up to meet his, a small, somewhat uncertain smile gracing her expression as she watches him. “What, too feminine?”

“No, not at all,” he says instantly, because it really isn’t. “It’s badass. Besides, being feminine is badass within itself, so you’re pretty much set.”

“I wasn’t sure about it at first,” she says, turning back to her work, “but roses have thorns. Besides, it sounds cool.”

She ducks her head to hide it, but Peter still catches her smile.

Progress is slow but steady, especially with the nanotech. It’s harder to figure out than Peter thought, but with Rhodey’s help and FRIDAY’s guidance, they eventually get it so the entire suit can fit it to a metal watch Morgan can wear. Technology has improved in the last decade by leaps and bounds, so the watch is discreet enough to be easily missed but powerful enough to rip into a full blown suit whenever needed. It also means that Morgan will always have it on her, so if anything ever happens when she’s not with him or one of the other Avengers, she’ll be safe. 

The same day they finish the suit is the first time Morgan tests it out.

He watches as she steps onto Tony’s old landing pad, still wearing a faded t-shirt and dirty jeans but her new watch glinting on her wrist. She turns to face him, looking nervous and psyched and focused all at once, despite her attempts to play it cool. They’ve tested the individual parts of the suit before, but this is the first time they’re trying it all together, and this is _big._ Peter’s excited himself, honestly, and he’s not even the one putting on a suit for the first time.

She glances up at him, expression anxious but thrilled. “We ready for this?” she asks.

Peter stands a couple feet away, DUM-E waiting beside him. He’s got a pair of wire cutters in hand, just in case this doesn’t go as well as they’re hoping, and DUM-E has a fire extinguisher at the ready clutched in his claw. Peter flashes her a thumbs up and a smile, giving her the all clear. “Let’s do it.”

She returns the grin, and visibly squares her shoulders as she holds her wrist in front of her. “Okay, here goes,” she breathes, half to him and half to herself, and carefully, she double taps the face of the watch with her pointer finger, letting it read her fingerprint and analyze the command she’s asking of it.

She nearly falls off the landing pad when the suit springs into action.

The watch bursts open to release the nanotech, the shining particles racing to cover her skin with the metal plating audibly snapping into place like the clatter of train tracks. It floods her, almost instantaneously coating her right hand and sweeping up her arm to encase her shoulders, cascading down her back and wrapping around her legs, ignoring the way she staggers in shock and then nearly loses her balance when it shoots under her feet. It unfolds to cover her left arm and chest, and finally races up the back of her neck, rushing over her hair until the visor drops over her face with a final _click._

And there, with her arms shot out to her sides in a desperate attempt to regain her footing, her legs askew, her chest heaving, and her entire body just barely upright, is Iron Rose. 

Peter drops the wire cutters. 

It’s an Iron Man suit through and through, albeit being a bit sleeker and easier to move in than Tony’s were. It makes achingly familiar creaks and whirs as she straightens up, her movements slowly gaining confidence as she grows more comfortable. Rose gold metal and golden accents shine in the artificial lighting of the workshop, and the eyes of the mask and the reactor embedded at the chest glow white as beacons. Slowly, she steadies herself, pushing her shoulders back and raising her head, and her hands fall into place almost automatically at her sides.

If you looked at her too quickly, you’d think she was Tony. 

The emotion crawls up Peter’s throat, threatening to choke him even as he swallows convulsively, trying to keep a hold of himself. The workshop has gone absolutely silent, as if either of them dare to even speak, the suit might crumble back into nothing. Peter can barely breathe.

Finally, the faceplate raises, and Morgan meets his eyes. “You know, staring is considered rude in most cultures,” she says breathlessly. 

He laughs and blinks back the tears before they can fall.

***

In the end, they decide to go back to the lakehouse to start training. They never did sell the cabin, and these days they go out there every once in a while during summers and holidays, but it’s deserted for most of the year. With almost no one around and a handy cover of trees keeping the general area relatively private, Peter literally can’t think of a better place to figure out how to use a super suit. 

He grabs one of Tony’s old models for himself, and the two of them make a weekend trip out of it. Rhodey gives them some general pointers before they leave, (“for god’s sake, do _not_ set the repulsors to 100 the first time you try them, you will fry like cheap bacon”) but once they arrive at the cabin, it’s just him and her and two full days to do nothing but spin around in the sky like giant metal ballerinas.

And yeah, Peter comes scary close to setting off a forest fire the first time he tries to fire the repulsor, but other than that, they catch on fast. 

Morgan’s a natural from the beginning, which really isn’t a surprise. Once she gets the basics of balancing and firing and figuring out exactly how much power the suit actually needs to go anywhere, it’s really just ends up with her doing loops in the sky, smoothing out her technique and laughing giddily into the coms.

Peter never quite gets the hang of flying, despite his best attempts, but the suit makes him feel vaguely claustrophobic anyway, and flying just isn’t his thing. He much prefers thwipping between buildings, close to the people, just near enough to the ground for the rush but high enough for the perspective. That middle ground is his place, and he’s okay with that.

The open sky, however, is completely and undeniably Morgan’s.

It’s where she belongs.

***

Soon, Peter starts taking her on missions with him. 

She doesn’t tag along on every mission he goes on, of course, but he brings her on the ones that he knows she can handle. The smaller things that aren’t that dangerous, but too big for him to take on by himself. For being a total noob at this whole superhero stuff, she’s actually a huge help.

The media goes downright batshit when pictures of the Iron Rose suit start circulating, and because they never officially announce that it’s Morgan behind the mask, theories spread like wildfire. What the media does know for sure, however, that it’s someone important and likely young under that metal, and photos of Iron Rose and Spider-Man fighting crime together go viral, as do the hashtags #TheSpiderAndTheRose and #MeltMyHeart.

Morgan’s a little weirded out by the obsession the media gets with the two them, but Peter, who’s currently running one of the top Tumblr bloggers for the two of them, finds it beyond entertaining. But even then, she hangs up the fanart they start receiving on a corkboard on the workshop wall, and Peter knows she doesn’t mind it as much as she claims.

She starts going on a few Avengers missions too, once she gets a few battles under her belt with Peter. Technically, she’s probably safer with a bunch of seasoned superheros revolving around her at all times, but the things they take on together are usually more serious missions with more danger to offer and bigger baddies to beat, which is why Peter’s glad her attendance is kind of rare.

Also, that girl is a daredevil to trump Peter back when he was fifteen and stupid, and Peter’s convinced he’ll be grey by the time he’s 30 because of her.

It makes his heart rate spike every time she gets too near anything even vaguely capable of doing her any harm, but she always spins away just in time, the golden metal of the suit catching the sunlight as she laughs into the coms, and he lets out the breath he’d been holding before he turns back to the fight.

It’s one of these missions, with the rest of the Avengers surrounding them as they battle some punk ass alien robots, that Peter finds his attention being split. 

The things they’re fighting today are definitely not the worst they’ve ever seen, but there’s a _ton_ of them, and they’re all covered in these poky, stabby spines-like things to would put an utterly blood thirsty cactus to shame. And, perhaps worst of all, the spines are made of unrelenting metal, which means when they hit, they hit deep and hard and violent.

So, when one charges Peter in the middle of the street, he takes his attention off of Morgan for just an instant to web it up and keep it from shish-kabobing him through the stomach.

And in that instant, there’s the distinct sound of crunching metal like the crushing of a soda can, happening almost almost simultaneously with a _shriek_ of pain over the coms that makes Peter’s heart freeze in his chest.

_”Morgan!”_

“Is she—”

“Morgan, honey, can you hear us? Come on, baby, talk to us—”

“Hold on, kiddo, we’re coming for you, just hold on—”

Peter’s brain just about short-circuits. 

The bot he just finished webbing up falls to the ground, but he’s not paying attention, instead spinning to the spot he last saw Morgan in a desperate attempt to find her. She’s not there anymore, but there are several brightly colored suits running down the street in one very distinct direction, so he shoots a final web in the direction of the oncoming hoard of robots, flips them all off, and turns to follow the crowd. 

Before he can, though, Sam’s voice cuts over the coms, sharp as glass. _”Spidey!”_ he barks. “You keep your ass parked right there, you hear me? We’ve got her. Start kicking the behinds of these goddamned robots and, for god’s sake, _keep them away from her!”_

The bots are admittedly about to overtake him on the street, even if it kills him to stay here instead of sprinting to Morgan, but he knows he’s gotta keep them back until someone else can step in. He growls under his breath as he turns back to them, knocking the front runners down with his webs to buy himself some time. “Karen, report on Iron Rose,” he bites into his mask.

“It appears Miss Stark was impaled in the right side by the spike of one of the robots,” Karen says. There’s a sudden lack of chatter and shouts on the other side of the coms, so Peter assumes that this report is going out to the others too. “She’s suffering from a stab wound, multiple contusions, and three broken ribs, on top of severe internal bleeding. There’s a great possibility of her right lung collapsing if medical assistance is not sought immediately.”

And shit, Peter can’t _do this_ anymore. 

Just as he falters, getting ready to turn tail and run and just hope for the best, a wave of red energy floods the street ahead, taking down more bots in a second than he would have been able to in an hour. Wanda drops down beside him from wherever she was floating around before, her hands braced in front of her as she holds the rest of them back. She shoots him an urgent look over her shoulder. “Go,” she tells him shortly, and he does. 

He sprints down the street in the direction the others were going earlier, and he quickly finds a huddle of suits a couple of buildings down, in the shelter of an alleyway. Scott is running towards them too from the other direction while Bruce rampages across the street, and the robots are held momentarily at bay. 

He skids to a stop in front of the huddle, just barely at the opening of the alley, chest heaving. In the middle of the few surrounding her, there’s a glint of rose gold against the blunt stone of the street.

“Oh, god,” he breathes. 

He can hear everything that’s happening through the coms, but it’s different to be standing before the situation, watching it in real time, taking it in with his heart in his throat. Morgan’s crying. She’s sobbing, actually, wheezing through inhales and trembling through exhales. Rhodey’s voice comes soft and soothing over the coms, and he’s crouched over her head in the alleyway, with both of their helmets retracted into their suits. 

Peter draws closer, and he realizes that one of Rhodey’s hands is slid under Morgan’s hair, cushioning her head against the hard cement beneath her, while the other rests on the side of her face, steadying her and keeping her as calm as he can manage. Keeping her from seeing just how bad the damage is.

Because then Peter does see the damage, and he tastes bile in the back of his throat.

The entire right side of the chest is entirely caved in, punctured, the crumpled metal sinking into Morgan like a deflated balloon as the arc reactor flickers threateningly. Clint hovers over her side, making sure she doesn’t move and make this any worse, while Bucky stands over them with his gun at the ready, playing lookout. Rhodey’s quiet reassurances never falter, even though the pink metal of the suit is painted crimson with blood.

Peter drops down on the concrete beside them, kneeling on the cold stone with stiff legs. He looks up at Clint. “Would taking off the suit help her or hurt her?” he asks, barely hearing his own voice. 

Clint hesitates for half a second, his hand just barely grazing the top of the puncture mark where the metal is inverted, digging into Morgan’s ribs in a jagged spike. But then he sighs, glancing over at Rhodey with a grim expression. “The second this comes out, we’re going to have to move her back to the Tower fast to beat this bleeding. You good to fly her?”

Rhodey pauses for breath as he glances up, his hand still framing the side of Morgan’s face. Her tear tracks soak the metal. “Ready when you are,” he says grimly. 

“Do it, Peter.”

Moving on instinct, Peter reaches out and taps the struggling arc reactor twice with his index finger, his fingerprint instantaneously registering as one of the two the suit will accept commands from. And then the suit starts retracting, racing to fold back into the wrist watch and doing whatever it takes to get back to that state.

Unfortunately, that include wrenching the twisted metal out of Morgan’s side, merciless and rough.

Her sobbing scream is going to haunt Peter’s nightmares for years, he knows. 

Scott arrives just as the suit completes folding back, and he slides into a kneel beside Clint, both of them leaning in and applying pressure to the now dramatically bleeding wound. Morgan’s gone limp and still on the cement, barely conscious, and Rhodey replaces their hands with one of his own as he gathers her into his arms.

She looks incredibly small without the suit, in her crimson-stained white t-shirt and old pair of ripped leggings. Peter struggles to get in a full breath.

Rhodey stands with her held close to the chest of the suit, and the helmet quickly reengages, snapping back into place. He looks at Peter expectantly, the suit whining as he prepares to lift off. “You’re following behind,” he says, voice tinny, and the words are a command, not a suggestion. 

It’s all Peter can do to nod.

***

By the time they reach the Tower, there’s already a team ready and prepped in medbay. FRIDAY really is a wonderful program. 

Peter staggers in just as Rhodey’s setting Morgan down on a stretcher, and the team starts hooking her up with wires and tubes and a plastic oxygen mask before he’s even fully pulled away. They shout over her, yelling stats and instructions and concepts, and the team has her racing down the halls to the OR within seconds.

The second the team disappears around the corner, Peter’s legs give out. 

Rhodey catches him before he can go down. “Woah, _hey,_ you’re okay,” he says, the helmet of his suit retracting again even as Peter scrambles to get his feet back under him again, his breaths coming fast and shallow. Rhodey lowers him down to the floor, and once they’re both safely situated on the ground, he reaches out and tugs of Peter’s mask with a gentle hand. “Hey,” he says again, softer this time. “It’s okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Peter looks up at him, and to his horror, promptly starts crying. 

There’s a split second where Peter has just enough time to be _mortified,_ because not even years of friendship with Rhodey makes it acceptable to start _bawling_ in his presence, but then Rhodey’s expression softens in sympathy. “Geez, kid,” he sighs, crossing his metal legs under him. “C’mere.”

His hand presses into the back of Peter’s neck, and he lets himself be pulled forward until his forehead rests on Rhodey’s shoulder. It’s not the most physically comfortable predicament, but it’s reassuring as hell, and Peter can’t help but let himself melt into Rhodey’s hold even as his sobbing worsens. 

“This— this was all my _fault,”_ he gets out, frantically. Part of him argues that he should be pulling away or fighting Rhodey’s hand or sucking it up, but a bigger part is so desperate for reassurance that he can’t make himself move. “I _did this.”_

Rhodey squeezes the back of his neck gently. “It’s not your fault, Peter. Morgan’s gonna be just fine.”

He presses his forehead to the warm metal of the War Machine armor, breath hitching even as he desperately tries to blink away tears. “I should have never thought I could build her a suit,” he gasps, voice hoarse. “I didn’t know what I was doing. It wasn’t strong enough, it didn’t keep her safe—”

“Nothing else would have kept her safe from that either,” Rhodey cuts in, voice soft. “Tony himself built my suit, but if I was the one who got hit instead of Morgan, I’d be the one in surgery right now. It wasn’t you.”

“But she’s my _kid,”_ Peter sobs, “and I let her get _hurt.”_

There’s a pause. 

Rhodey’s hand doesn’t move where it rests at the top of his spine, but he doesn’t say anything either, not for a long moment. Peter knows what he just did, knows what he just called Morgan, but fuck it, it’s true. Morgan’s his kid. She’s always been his kid, and it’s always been his job to keep her safe, and he fucked it up. 

He failed her. 

But then Rhodey takes a breath, like he’s about to start talking, and Peter’s own breath hitches in response. “That’s what Tony said about you, in the beginning,” Rhodey says, softly. 

Peter flatout _sobs,_ but he can’t bring himself to care. His dignity’s already annihilated anyway.

“I mean it,” Rhodey continues, his thumb sweeping back and forth mindlessly at the base of Peter’s skull. “You got hurt, and he and I had a very similar conversation to the one we’re having in a very similar medbay to the one we’re in, and that was the first time I heard him call you his kid. True story.”

He shakes his head where it’s still resting on Rhodey’s shoulder. “I just can’t let her down,” he whispers, his voice broken.

Rhodey’s hand squeezes his neck again, gentle and reassuring. “You won’t,” he says. “You’re Morgan’s Tony, bud. You’re her person. You wouldn’t be able let her down if you tried.”

There’s another moment of quiet that follows, but then Rhodey sighs, the breath ruffling Peter’s hair. “He’d be so proud of you, kiddo,” he says quietly.

Peter’s beginning to think he’s going to have to scrape rust off the armor after all these tears, especially when that sets off a whole new round of waterworks, but luckily, Rhodey doesn’t seem to mind. 

***

When Morgan wakes up from surgery hours later, Peter nearly starts crying again. Clearly, it’s been a very emotional day. 

She’s bleary and drugged up to her eyeballs, but she’s conscious and breathing and _alive,_ and she’s going to be _okay,_ and something in Peter splinters when she comes around. The other Avengers in the room give him the chance to be alone with her after they’ve had the chance to say hello, and he finds himself sitting in the chair beside her bed, her hand within his. 

He knows she’ll be going back under soon, still too weak to fight the hold of the remaining sedation, so he squeezes her hand while he can, grabbing her fading attention. “Hey,” he whispers when she looks over at him. “I love you.”

She smiles, dopey and drugged but genuine. “I love you 3000,” she mumbles in return.

And yeah, Peter knows, they’ll be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have the time, I’d love to hear what you thought! 
> 
> Thank you so much for taking the time to read, and have an incredible day! <3


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